Jumpstarting the Last Moment in Time
by Madi Holmes
Summary: Dean and Sam (actually more Dean than Sam) have to make the bunker livable. Dean confronts his own past and emotions about finally having a permanent home after being lost in the Purgatory wilderness for a year. Discussions on food, cleanliness, and why Dean decided to nest as a coping strategy.


Somehow the bunker had been mostly clean. A few piles of papers here, a book case that had caved in, spilling books there, dust just everywhere. But the building's integrity had held, time capsuled to the 1950s.

Dean recognized it for what it was. A place that had survived fifty years untouched and whole, an air of permanency and safety. A place that shifted him, relaxing that inner core always clenched and tight deep inside him, ebbing the endless stress and worry about safety. The rolling Flint Hills as far away from the eternal temperate rain forest of Purgatory as he could get.

The brothers trundled down the stairs, past the military surplus machines, and toured the foyer.

Sam was already distracted by the books, by things and mementoes that had made him Sam. Dean had to be careful, ready to escape at any moment, but already the place had become something more in their minds that hadn't existed in a very long time.

He thunked his bag onto the study desk as Sam had pulled out a book, sneezed hard, and thumbed through it.

Dean pushed through another door, found the kitchen galley. Didn't know where to start. A monster stove huddled in the far corner, all white chrome and stainless steel that looked like it had been had been recycled from an old Studebaker. A small sink piled high with crusted plates and cups long past the point of cleaning.

Dean pulled out a drawer.

The wooden frame snapped apart, knife blades sliding straight toward his exposed wrist. He quickly juggled the shelf back and forth, trying to stop their descent. One slipped, making contact against pale flesh, touching blade to skin. He stopped breathing as it all finally balanced, caught in a see-saw equilibrium. Gently moved the point away from his veins, and shoved the drawer back into place. He noted to fix the drawer on the last line of his mental "to do" list.

Opened a cupboard- slowly, still a little jittery, and found tins of spam, beans, and corn. All expired in the early 60s. His nose curled, knowing the fridge was next. Didn't want to check the fridge. Knew what would be inside.

Approached the Amana refrigerator cautiously. Another monster 1950s contraption- the kind that locked with a handle. Instantly inundated with memories of being five and staying in houses where those same fridges had been moved into basements and garages next to burnt orange sofas and stained card tables. Being specifically told not to climb into them, because the latch would trap him inside without any air. He'd always wondered how they thought he was that stupid.

Remembered that Bobby had one way back when they first met him. The handle had broken years (decades?) earlier, and he'd fixed it with a vise grip. Even now he would laugh with Sam about how the temporary fix had outlasted the machine itself.

Flashbacked again to that one modern fridge back at his old house with the new family where the kid had gotten caught inside with the child proof lock, still wondered what the mom had been thinking.

Too many memories. Finally pulled open the ice chest.

Its contents had long since turned to sludge and dry crusted along the bottom. It smelled, but he'd smelt worse, especially as the decomposition process had already finished. It was disgusting, but it wasn't even close to what he'd dug up in the past- the younger ghosts with their still-rotting corpses being the worst. Grimaced at realizing that he had that frame of reference.

That didn't mean he couldn't have some fun.

"Oh my god!" he yelped out. "Sam, get in here." He fake gagged for effect.

...

"Sam?" Dean yelled again, opened the galley door, saw his brother stacking books. "Sam! Sam Sam Sam." Dean sighed. Sam was entering his prissy bitch phase.

"What?"

"Come here, you need to smell this."

"Yeah, that's not happening, Dean. We did that game in the past. Never again."

"No, come here. I need your help with something."

Sam rolled his eyes, flipped a book pile so that the largest was on the bottom, and entered the kitchen. "What?"

Dean keened proudly as he opened the door, yelped "Dinner's served!" revealing blackened mold and crusted detritus.

Sam paled, gagged as Dean giggled. "Oh god, why?"

Dean shrugged, flipped the door closed. "First thing on the list: turn on the water and get a new fridge." He'd loved the idea of a fridge. Something to just store food that he could eat at any time. Ice cubes and milk and cold beer and veggies.

"You do that," Sam replied, huffing back into the other room.

Dean slumped a little, realized that Sam had just pawned all domestic and cleaning duties onto him. If they were staying. That his grandfather had bequeathed something to them than just more family responsibilities and crap.

If they stayed.

Honestly, it wasn't even a question anymore.

Dean found the shooting range, already knew that it was going to need a lot of work. The entire room was covered in dust and oily water stains. Put it on the lower half of the "To clean" list. Picked the lock on a side door, found the secret candy stash. A fully loaded armory of guns, knives, bombs, swords, cleaning supplies, a vintage bazooka, a tommy gun, and old oil cans full of bullets. Dean had found his blue heaven, and suddenly realized how Sam had felt upon seeing those books. All he wanted was to find a legal pad and start cataloging guns and ammo. Pulled out a Smith and Wesson revolver, flipped open the cylinder. It was unloaded, but had built up a lot of corrosion. Dean wondered if it was worth rehabilitating. Then decided to try even though he was sure it was too far gone.

Stopped.

Dean looked around the room. Really looked. Tried to see what was missing, what wasn't. The only things he could deduce were that two pistols and either a shot gun or a rife were from the racks. Both storage units were full except for those empty slots. He walked to each, mimicked grabbing the guns during an emergency, felt confident that those would be the first taken. Outside of that, he couldn't figure out what else was missing.

The library, Dean decided, was to be Sam's project. All of it. He could sweep up the dust motes and mouse shit and polish the wooden bookcases. Replace the lights, wipe off the wall paneling, dust the books, take out the asbestos paneling, rewire the electric system up to code, install the wifi, bring in the computer stuff he always swore they needed to fight millennia-old gods, clear out a shelf so Dean could store his own favorites (Vonnegut, Seuss, Bukowski, Danielle Steele, plus his porn stash).

Ambled into the library, checked for cracks, water damage, noted religious symbols, walked around a distracted Sam, thought about flicking his brother's ear, let it go. Distracted by growing hunger, wondering what to scrounge up for dinner. "We should have some broasted chicken," Dean smiled, "with those potato wedges and sour cream."

"None in Kansas, Dean. You know that," Sam mumbled. "There's a couple places in Missouri."

"Omaha! There's that hole in the wall dive in Omaha where the cockroaches are the secret ingredient. Perubsky's! We can leave now, get there in about two hours. Stock up on about five entire chickens, bring them back, eat for the next week."

"I'm not going to Omaha."

"We've driven longer for less."

"No, Dean. Just get something at the store."

"Okay," he finally agreed, deciding to pick a fight over something stupid later. Hunger overruled sibling squabbles. Grabbed his jacket, and took off. He was starting to get cabin fever. He didn't want it, currently hated the very idea of travelling and sleeping in crap hotels, hiking through woods, but he couldn't just break a lifetime of nomadic wanderings in a day.

He was full.

Crazy full.

He wanted nothing more than to lay down and digest to some Pink Floyd or Clapton.

He'd dumped cleaning supplies in the kitchen with the cases of water bottles and toilet paper. He'd forced Sam to help him find the water valve, and the two had managed to crank the shut-ff valves back open. The pipes rumbled, rattled, squirted out brown brack for the first ten minutes, then slowly began to run clear, if still a bit murky orange. It was at least good enough to flush with, and given a day or two, shower in. Dean was happy about showers. And toilets.

Sam disappeared after dinner, pulled out their sleeping bags, and set up the bedding on the pallets as Dean cleaned up.

He finally emerged from the kitchen to find Sam again nose-deep in the books. Dean looked for something, anything familiar to read, but couldn't get past _Etruria: Mythology, Language, and Migration Theories._ It just wasn't in him to deal with that kind of topic. And they were all on that kind of topic. He was bored, dangerously so, and wanted something to watch or listen to or download or pirate or keep him entertained.

And then he saw the oversized crates in the back. That low memory clamoring up in him again from his childhood. He knew those crates, what treasures they stored.

And then he saw the RCA turntable. Zeroed in on it, and started hunting through the bins. He didn't recognize a lot of the record albums, some he did, some he'd learned from Benny during a "Name your favorite singer/band/movie/tv show/whatever came to mind" discussion one endless night. He'd tried to explain Dr. Sexy MD in the most manly terms possible, but then dropped it for The Simpsons. "It was like The Flintstones." Then had to explain the Flintstones. "Think... Jackie Gleason." Bennie finally got that reference, and Dean thanked the television gods for Nick-at-Nite reruns when he was a kid.

Dean shook it all off, and put a Kitty Wells record on the player. Country music played as he settled in, growing nostalgia for his childhood, for his friend, for Sam. Slipped into an overstuffed leather chair, and fell asleep. Thought he heard his brother grumble about not liking their dad's music, but was too far gone to care.

The kitchen was still filthy. He'd scrounged up plates, silverware, cookware, glasses, and a portable record player from an antique store in Smith Center. Laughed at the eight track machine, but flipped through the music selection just out of morbid curiosity.

He ignored the breathless "gay hipster" taunts from the teenaged worker as he lugged it all back home along with a dozen or so of classic rock albums he'd found sitting on some chair in a dark corner next to a baby buggy. The snot nosed kid had mentioned something about his grandpa's music. Dean wanted to feed him to Benny, forcibly teach the guy a real lesson in music before he died from blood loss. He missed Benny.

The bunker killed radio waves, and Dean missed music. FM basically sucked that far from nowhere, and AM was mostly right wing politics, right wing sports, Charlie Rose the occasional Catholic history discussion, and something that was either the BBC world or endless mariachi music. And that was all outside in the Impala. Inside, he couldn't get anything other than FM white noise or AM static. Another thing he'd have to adapt to- the loss of easy-to -access radio.

Both the portable record player and the turntable helped fill in those empty cracks in the bunker, helped ease Dean into a more sedate lifestyle than what he was used to, that he'd been forced into. He didn't like those thoughts, and melded in with some Heart and Fleetwood Mac as he started to clean. It was that kind of a job.

Dean the domestic deity.

Everything was being tossed. He'd briefly wondered if he could sell the tins and boxes to the antique store for some easy cash, but everything ultimately had to be thrown out. He'd ordered a new fridge and mattresses, thought he could rehabilitate the stove for the time being. The gas had freaked him out at first. Then decided that he'd died enough times that he could live with dying via gas explosion due to bad gas lines. If death by fire was a good enough death for his mother, it was a good enough for him.

But the pilot light came on, and nothing exploded. He could get used to it, even having to manually light the oven through a small opening with a large punk.

As Dean cleaned, he consecutively plowed through what albums he had from 1970 through 1979 in consecutive order. He was finally working through 1980- Blondie, AC/DC, Rush, Dire Straits, a few others- when he'd finished. He was back to discovering the joys and frustrations of listening to entire albums in one go (it wasn't as easy to change songs or records, and time had not been kind to all of them), but it kept him focused on the job.

As he finally backed out through the main door, mopped the last of the linoleum. He flipped the mop into a corner, and yelled out. "You're cooking tonight, Sam. I expect meat and some sort of potato. Also take out the trash. It's in the corner, but not until after the floor's dried."

"Fine," Sam sighed, closing his book.

Dean didn't argue, didn't care about the attitude. He was filthy, wanted to eat, shower, and see the look on Sam's face when he saw the ten industrial sized black bags full of sixty year old fossilized food.


End file.
